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Loveless Praise for the series: It was only a matter of time before a clever publishes realized that there is an audience tot whom Evik on Main Sheet or ElediicLtu(yltrnd are as significant and wottiv of study a The Catcherin the Rye or Maddtemarch.... The seises, which now comprises 29 tides with mote in the works, is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute Lock Beek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration-The Ne>a.' York Tames Book Reuieu' Ideal tot the rock geek who thinks lanes notes just aren't enough-Rotfrng Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet-Bookslaet These are for the insane collectors out there who apptecsate fantastic design, well executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We ate huge nerds-Vice A brilliant seties...each one a work of teal love-NME (UK,) Passionate, obsessive, and smart-Nylon Religious tracts tot the rock `n' roll faithful-Boldtype [A] consistently excellent series-Uncrat (Ub,) We...aten't naive enough to think that we're vout only source for reading about music but if we had out way..watch out. Fot those of you who teally like to know evetvthing bete is to know about an album, you'd do well to check out Continuum's "33 1/3" setes of books.Pitchfork For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com and 33third.blogspot.com Also available in this series: Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zones Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans Harvest by Sam Inglis The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli Electric Ladyland by John Perry Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott Sign O' the Times by Michaelangelo 1blatos The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard Let It Be by Steve Matteo Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk Aqualung by Allan Moore OK Computer by Dai Griffiths Let It Be by Cohn Meloy Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno Exile on Main Street by Bill Janovitz Grace by Daphne Brooks Murmur by J. Niimi Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli Ramones by Nicholas Rombes Endtroducing... by Eliot Wilder Kick Out the Tams by Don McLeese Low by Hugo Wilcken In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper Music from Big Pink by John Niven Paul's Boutique by Dan LeRoy Doolittle by Ben Sisario There's a Riot Goin' On by Miles Marshall Lewis Stone Roses by Alex Green In Utero by Gillian Gaar Bee Thousand by Marc Woodsworth The Who Sell Out by John Dougan Highway 61 Reoisited by Mark Polizzotti The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Merck Court and Spark by Sean Nelson 69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol Use Your Illusion I & II by Eric Weisbard Songs in the KU of Life by Zeth Lundy Forthcoming in this series: London Calling by David L. Ulin Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor and many more ... Loveless Mike McGonigal continuum N E W Y O R K • L O N D O N 2007 The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www continuumbooks. com Copyright © 2007 by Mike McGonigal All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers or their agents. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McGonigal, Mike. Loveless / Mike McGonigal. p. cm. -- (33 1/3) ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-1548-6 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8264-1548-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. My Bloody Valentine (Musical group). Loveless. I. Tide. ML421.M9M34 2006 782.42166092'2-dc22 2006027355 Contents Disclaimer Vii Foreword: Slow 1 Chapter One: You Made Me Realize 3 Chapter Two: Loveless 15 Chapter Three: Paint a Rainbow 21 Chapter Four: We're So Beautiful 25 Chapter Five: Glider 31 Chapter Six: Only Shallow 37 Chapter Seven: Come in Alone 39 Chapter Eight: Swallow 53 Chapter Nine: To Here Knows When 59 Chapter Ten: Forever and Again 69 Chapter Eleven: I Only Said 75 Chapter Twelve: When You Wake You're Still in a Dream 81 Chapter Thirteen: Honey Power 87 Chapter Fourteen: No More Sorry 91 Chapter Fifteen: Blown a Wish 97 Chapter Sixteen: We Have All the Time in the World 101 Chapter Seventeen: What You Want 109 Postscript: Dave Field 113 Disclaimer Although the members of My Bloody Valentine submitted to interviews for this book, and all the quotes from those interviews contained herein are reasonably correct, this is in no way an official M1y Bloody Valentine book, and the views expressed (except in direct quotes) belong to the author, and not the band. Foreword Slow Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from interviews conducted by the author in late 2005 and early 2006. Bilinda Butcher and Kevin Shields were spoken with on the phone, while the other interviews were conducted via email. Vinita joshi of Rocket Girl helped arrange most of the interviews, and she also kept sending encouraging emails and helpful suggestions. I owe her big time. Ned Raggett, All Music Guide scribe and the "king" of I Love Music, gave excellent and detailed editing suggestions. I'm grateful to him for sharing his essay on Loveless from the book Marooned (Da Capo, 2007), prepublication; it's essential reading. Speaking of books, to arrive at a proper timeline for the recording information, I relied quite a bit on David Cavanagh's The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize (Virgin Books, 2001), my copy of which was borrowed from my exhousemate, Michael. David Barker is an amazingly patient and helpful editor. Thank God he is, 'cause it basically took as long to write the thing as it did for the band to record the album (though it cost considerably less money). For transcription assistance and further editing suggestions, I'm indebted to Lucy from Sonic Boom, Philip Pickens, Karl Ivanson, Jennifer O'Connor, Jana Martin, Fred Cisterna, Andrew Pih, Dixie Marco and you if I forgot to mention you and you helped in some way. Thanks also to Douglas Shepherd, Steve Connell, Jason Bokros, Kevin McGonigal, Liz Haley, Tae Won Yu, Eugene Booth, Marilyn McGonigal, Luc Sante, the Sundbys, David Keenan and Jim Wiles. This book is dedicated to Lily Hudson, because what kind of schmuck doesn't dedicate a book to his girlfriend (especially when she's fiercely smart and puts up with all his crap, yet loves him anyway)? And I know it's cheesy to say it, but this book wouldn't exist without Kevin Shields, one of the smartest and humblest people I've ever had the pleasure to talk to. Chapter One You Made Me Realize Three quarters of the way through a show by My Bloody Valentine at a mid-sized concert hall in 1992 in Pennsylvania, we're all hit by absolutely blinding noise from the stage. My ears need a few seconds to adjust; I can't hear anything at all at first even though I can tell the band is furiously going at it, bent over their instruments as they are. My ears must be so overloaded that nothing registers. It's a vacuum, like in the summer when you come out into the sunlit street after being inside for hours in a dark cafe, when you have to just stand there a few seconds, squinting and blinking dazedly before your eyes allow in this new information-the cars and the people and where the dog shit on the sidewalk might be. Even the monitor speakers are turned around toward the crowd, turned as high as they'll go, and now I learn what it must be like to stick my head inside of a jet engine. Surprise: it's fucking unbearable. The band had been playing a song a few seconds prior to this barrage-"You Made Me Realize," originally the first tune on their first recording for the Creation label, a five-song EP released on August 8, 1988. The black and white cover showed a pretty woman that I took to be guitarist and vocalist Bilinda Butcher laying down on the grass, her eyes rolled upward, a long knife and flowers placed across her throat, cropped to show just her shoulders and head. It was Goth, but not too Goth because it was hot. The words to the song, near as I could make them out anyway; seemed pretty typical for the band at the time, and help you respect their decision never to print the lyrics in their records. "What did you say you'd find / Then come, come, come, get the hell inside / You can close your eyes / Well you might as well commit suicide / Wait for me because I waited for you / No that's not what you should do / Don't hate me 'cause I don't hate you / Insane eyes / You made me realize" This is not a band you listen to because you love their lyrics, since the way they sing them is so low in the mix-not to mention how daft they are. We'll briefly return to the issue of MBV's lyrics and why songs with words you can't really understand are so often superior later on. "You Made Me Realize" is among My Bloody Valentine's most thrashy, headbangy numbers, but it's definitely a song nonetheless-you know, verse, chorus, verse. And yet, what is happening now, in the concert hall, sounds like what your parents think you listen to: pure noise; there appear to be no dynamics to it at all. It sounds dreadful. It is can't-think-straight loud, a deliriously loud kind of loud. It seems to be tacky, showoff\; offensive and most of all, really- painful. Not to play the indie rock version of "Quien Es Mas Macho?" with you or anything, but I'd seen some very loud shows-Husker Du, Motorhead, Gen Ken, Black Flag, you get the drift. The thing is, I knew (or should have known) to expect this. When we were in the car en route, my friends Rusty and Mark had even bet each other about how long "it" would be tonight. This was something the band was already renowned for, this noise stretch inside of "You Made Me Realize." I just hadn't really paid attention, I guess. Rusty and Mark were waiters at Cafe Orlin in the East Village who, along with several other Orlin staff, later wound up working for Matador Records-Rusty as national sales director, Mark as bassist for the Dustdevils and then Pavement. Rabid music geeks with acute social skills, they were friends with the band and the reason I'd driven out all this way, my ride being exchanged for entrance and the chance to pal around backstage afterward. Loveless had been released a few months before, and My Bloody Valentine was now my favorite band. They were at this point pretty much everyone I knew's favorite band, so of course I was there. I'd seen them in '89, before I was much of a convert, at the behest of the Orlin crew. That entire show at the comparatively tiny club Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey, had been so loud (with J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr. manning the soundboard that night) that we essentially watched the show from the room next door, it being more than loud enough through soundproofed concrete. But if they'd played the noise bit that time, I can't say. Here, tonight, the group has far more power going for them than they did at Maxwell's. And they are using it, all of it. I am feeling very nostalgic for Maxwell's, wishing I could slip away easily. I'm smack in the middle of a large, confused crowd. People are freaking the fuck out from the noise, making for the exits or doing that swarm-dance version of slam-dancing that larger venues and alternative rock bands both tend to coax from younger audiences. Lots of these kids look really young, and do not look happy. I feel like maybe I could be sick, for real, so I step back from the swirl of backward baseball caps, my pulse quickening. I can imagine this all is coming across as hyper-hyperbolic, but the sounds feel like they are hitting me, especially in the stomach; it's truly like getting socked in the gut. I recall a concert by the hand Flipper in 1984, in Miami, when my friend Malcolm Tent had animatedly informed me not to eat anything before that gig. He said the bassist deliberately detuned his bass to a really low frequency that was supposed to trigger audience members' bowels to let loose, creating potentially the exact reversal of a G.G. Allin show. That turned out to be bogus, but I was really scared the whole time Flipper played and was super afraid I'd accidentally shit myself at this cool punk rock concert I'd snuck into, at the age of sixteen. Later, at NYU as an undergrad, I researched experiments supposedly conducted during W\VII by the British Army into the efficacy of sound as an instrument of war. I learned that "sonic cannons" had apparently been constructed at some point, and of course tested on Army personnel. Throbbing Gristle had done a lot of research into this stuff too, apparently. As I'm pummeled by these sounds I wonder if they hadn't somehow gotten hold of one of these things, and now have one pointed straight at us. Somehow, though (and it's really hard to say how or exactly when, though I'd say at least five minutes in), things start to change, and the sounds become less intense-or less threatening, more organic and almost melodic-and my stomach's fine. The crowd of kids toward the front who'd started to thrash about uncontrollably are still moving, but with less menace. They move slowly and lurchingly, like drugged livestock. Perhaps it's that my ears have adjusted to the pain? Or maybe they've shut down entirely, and what I'm "hearing" are the increasingly pleasant, ringing tones of endorphin rush? Now, just as suddenly as it hit in the first place, something truly beautiful is happening. A playful array of overtones can be heard bouncing about on top of the dirge. Everything goes into slow motion. I am absolutely transported and it seems that this cloud of harmonics sweetly filling the room, these delightful ping-ponging notes, are perhaps the whole point of this exercise, what the band had been trying to get to all along. The band do not appear to have changed what they're doing, they're still furiously playing what appears to be one chord, all of them. I glance, nervously, animatedly about the room to see if other people have "gotten it" or not. Some cute girls are hippie dancing now to this sustained barrage, so yeah I think they have. There is a shimmering, hallucinatory quality to these notes that dance atop the noise, and it's hard to explainnor have I found it to be captured on tape after scouring live shows. At best you might hear a faint Xerox of a Xerox similar to the way Charlie Patton's recordings show you maybe one tenth of what he was doing with his guitar. But anyway, you want to know what it sounded like? If you played Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music album and the middle ten minutes of Terry Riley's Rainbow in CurvedAir at the same time, well, that would probably sound like shit. But if you can imagine what that might sound like if it didn't sound like shit, a heavy duty industrial dirge with blissdrone birdcalls atop it, then you'd have a good estimate. It was brutally psychedelic, and more than mildly euphoric. Since that concert, I've had similar sensations briefly occur at performances by La Monte Young, Maryanne Amacher, the Sun City, Girls, and a few sacred harp singings in East Tennessee-like there is a ghost of the music you are witnessing riding on top of it, or inside of it, that your body is somehow a vessel for total some bliss. I've never experienced the sensation so intensely, or so violently, before or since, even when seeing MBV do the same thing two other times on that tour. That night, the show is over for me as soon as the band goes back into the lurching chug-chug-changa-chung, chug-chug-changa-chung chord progression of the song to close it out. I am in a daze, trying to figure out what just happened, wondering idly if it was worth the hearing loss. I have questions: Why did it take several minutes of excruciating noise before I could begin to hear these lovely, ethereal counternotes happening inside of it? Was it just a question of adjustment, or hallucination, or did it take that long for them to appear? Was that really one of the best times I'd ever felt in my life, and why? Driving home afterward, I have this vague suspicion that the seemingly painstaking Loveless, a record instantly rumored to have cost a bazillion dollars and to have bankrupted its record label and known to have taken years to record, was somehow inspired by the noise section of "You Made Me Realize," as if Loveless itself, with all its smeared melodies and ghostly ethereal feedback, were the controlled symphonic version of this cruder and more spontaneous freak-out experiment. It will take me almost fourteen years to ask guitarist Kevin Shields about the rela tionship between the two, talking on the phone just before Christmas 2005, and he basically laughs at me when I do, sweetly taking me to task for trying to read too much into things. Perhaps my visceral, disoriented response to this section of their live show had so closely mirrored my initial response to hearing the album, where I felt as if I'd been suspended upside down in a tank filled with beautiful tropical fish, that it only made sense that I ended up conflating the two? In 2004, the webzine Buddyhead printed an interview with Shields where he reminisced at length about the "noise" bit. "Usually people would experience a type of sensory deprivation, and they would lose the sense of time. It would force them to be in the moment, and since people don't usually get to experience that, there'd be a sense of elation. There would be a feeling of, "Wow, that was really weird, I don't know what happened, but I suddenly heard this symphony... " It was such a huge noise with so much texture to it, it allowed people to imagine anything. Like when you hypnotize somebody, and nothing becomes something. That was what the whole purpose became." It's both a revelation and a letdown to read Shields say this. It validates what I had heard, in a way, but it also made it seem like just some apparition. I want Kevin to say that the piece had been a mathematically derived bliss-throughpain formula, a Tony Conrad or Henrv Flynt-like controlled research approach with sine waves and amplitudinal graphs and frequency ratios painstakingly figured out beforehand, perhaps with a little sacred geometry/harmony of the spheres huzzah thrown in for good measure. And here he's saying it was just a lucky mistake the band hit on one night out of drunken frustration with their audience? And I mean, "When nothing becomes something"? Dude, that sounds like a quote from Baba Ram Dass's Be Here Nora). Still curious what the band was doing exactly during "Realize," and where all that melody came from, I press him about it. "There was no melody!," he exclaims. "Every melody everyone had was in their head." The group played all the strings on the bass at the same time and then me with this whammy pedal able to go two octaves lower and then bring it up and down like that. And then with various distortion pedals I could change the texture of the noise whenever I wanted so it wasn't just like one sound, it was just sort of moving along somehow. It was the best part of the night always and each night it was an experiment to see how long it would take for the audience to turn from like one state to another. A certain percent of the audience would start sticking their fingers up at us or they would put their hands up in the air with their eyes closed, or do something or do something physical. I pretty much would always go on as long as it took to change the audience." "When it was clear that the audience was changed, totally-even if it was one person left with their fingers in the air or in their ears, we would wait for them to give into it," Kevin explains. "Sometimes it would take forty minutes for that one individual to give up. When the audience was fully and utterly done, we had the signal process where I would look at Debbie and we'd go back into the final parts of the song. That's something we could only do when we did, 'cause now we've all got various accumulated ear damage and other conditions. I'm definitely in the future not going to do experiments like that. The sound of clacking plates really hurts my ears now" After the Pennsylvania show, I get to hang with the band thanks to the Orlins, and I nervously ask Kevin and drummer Cohn O'Coisig if I can release a seven- inch single that would consist solely of the jet engine part from "Realize," as this had never been documented. The break in the studio version only lasts fifteen seconds total and there had never been an official live release by the group, not even one song. They both like the idea, and say "Yes!" and we exchange information. Releasing this record will be a highlight of my life, I think, while I'm leaving the large concrete structure with my friends. At the time, I edited a fanzine called Chemical Imbalance that had seven-inch records with each issue. They'd always been compilations that I assembled by asking people for unreleased material. The MBV single would be the first time that one band alone would appear on one of these records, but I figured it would be worth bending the "rules" a little for my favorite band. Kevin agrees to go back home and listen to the live DAT recordings after the US tour is over, and to excerpt the very best seven to twelve minutes for a release. Months pass and I don't hear from him, until finally, after pestering Kevin on the phone time and again, he informs me that, after listening back to all of the tapes, none of them sound quite good enough. I wonder if he was surprised that the overtone sonata stuff could not be discerned on the recordings? I didn't press him on it, and he was really sweet and apologetic and maybe embarrassed even. It was impossible to be too upset. Years later, I realize that I've had the very same experience that almost anyone who's attempted since Loveless to release music by My Bloody Valentine has had. And all I was personally out was the cost of a few transatlantic phone calls! By 1992, Kevin had seemingly become such a control freak that almost nothing would live up to his standards ever again. Sure, there would be two cover songs recorded by the group, Kevin would keep busy with remixes, and by playing in someone else's rock band, and even record a few sappy songs for a Hollywood movie by himself. But the principal sound of My Bloody Valentine since 1992 has been silence. I come here to praise Loveless and not to play the part of the pissed-off fanboy who's still upset that its successor never materialized. I'm not sure I'd want to hear the successor, anyway. And as you'll see, it's even a wonder that Loveless ever happened in the first place.